Media reactions to Boris Nemtsov's murder

Drug kingpin nabbed after lengthy manhunt

Police have captured Colombia's biggest drug kingpin Daniel Rendon (alias Don Mario), for whom the government had offered a 2.1-million-dollar bounty. They say Rendon is in charge of a network of 1,500 hitmen used by drug trafficking cartels.

A special unit of 315 police nabbed Rendon, 43, in a rural area near Necocli, in Antioquia department.

Police say Rendon is in charge of a network of some 1,500 hitmen used by drug trafficking cartels.

"The president (Alvaro Uribe) has just been informed in Rio de Janeiro where he was meeting with Brazilian President Lula Da Silva," presidential spokesman Cesar Mauricio Velasquez told Colombian radio.

Uribe has spoken directly with police chief General Oscar Naranjo, "to get the details on the successful operation in (the northwest region of) Uraba, and now he is breathing easy," his spokesman said.

Uribe had ordered Rendon's arrest, intelligence sources told AFP, because of his alleged ties to leftist FARC rebels with whom he could swap drugs for weapons.

Infighting among leaders of bands of hitmen last week left 31 people dead in Medellin, the capital of Antioquia. The army sent in 500 troops and 6,800 police to poor neighborhoods on the hillsides ringing Medellin, Colombia's second city, with more than two million people.